Just put XBMC onto a Amazon FireTV

[+Warwagon MVC]

In my movie theater, I had been running XBMC off a Core 2 duo dell system. I always forget to turn the damn thing off so I wanted an ARM box running Android which could run XBMC and have enough horse power to decode 720p and 1080p video and use far less power in the process.

 

Oddly enough my theater's speakers are the Logitech Z-5500. I see no reason to replace them I think they sound good. Plus 8 years ago someone gave them to me for $42.80 (No joke!).

 

Only issue is they run off S/PDIF. So I was looking for an Android Based system which had built in S/PDIF. As I was searching, the one that showed up was the Amazon FireTV, it was only $100 and after researching XBMC I saw you could easily install it on there. So I thought what the heck.

 

Well it just arrived today (about 30 mins ago), i'm not going to go into detail on how to install XBMC onto the FireTV .. you can just Google it and find the officially wiki, I had it done in 5 mins.

 

 

 

The system is amazingly fast loading XBMC from a cold boot took about 2 second (After the fire TV starts up). Going back to it while already open, instant.

 

So then I got out my trusty Kilowatt.

 

I plugged the Fire TV into a kilowatt

 

I first tested my Core 2 dell system.  That system has no dedicated graphics card just onboard. Under load it was showing around 75 - 80 watts.

Then I tested the Fire TV. As soon as I plugged it in it went from 02 to 03 back down to 02 Watts. While playing a 720p movie I still saw only 02 watts.

 

Obviously because its running off an  ARM CPU its going to use far less power than the desktop. Never the less I was impressed.

 

So I guess if you have a desktop system that you only use for XBMC then you may want to consider trying out the Fire TV and save some money on your electric.

 

Below is a video of it in action

 

I kept calling it "Kindle Fire" ... I meant to say "Fire TV"

Yes I know I have a mirror in the room I have to get covered up and yes I know I should ceiling mount the projector.

 

[+Warwagon MVC]

Well I got SnesX sideloaded on it as well as a purchased app I bought (as a test to see if it could be done). Used titanium backup to backup the purchased app off my phone. Then opened the tar.gz file and extracted the apk(1) file and renamed the extention to just apk and sideloaded it to my device.

 

1) Go into settings / system / developer options / turn on ADB Debugging

2) Connect to it using ADB  ...

 

adb kill-server

adb start-server

adb connect <Ip address of fire TV>

 

then just send the package

 

adb install <apk-file-name>

 

once installed you can open your app by going to settings / applications / Manage all Installed Applications

 

 

Worked great. I'm liking the Fire TV more and more.

[+Warwagon MVC]